Tag Archives: weight

It was a beautiful autumn Friday in New England. My daughter had just completed two successful, confidence-inspiring hours of gymnastics at the Little Gym. (In a blue shiny leotard we had just purchased, nonetheless!) We walked back to the car, hand-in-hand; I was proud of this time. She was a baby who had low muscle tone, and I had put her in gymnastics purposefully. Now, she was doing flips over the bars.

As I unlocked the car, Fiona started to gaze off into the distance. Stare, in fact. I followed her gaze to her classmate and parents, who were walking together.

A slow smirk spread over her face, as her gaze focused on the obese father.

“Mama, he’s fat.” She continued smirking, and an implied sense of power washed over her as she realized she was NOT and he WAS.

Not my daughter.

******

For those of you who don’t know, I was a FAT kid. I was mocked for it by classmates, I was deemed “disgusting”, I was even sexually assaulted by a classmate in music class “because I was fat.” (Because I deserved it, because I was fat.)

There are people who will view this who will argue with me and say that there’s no negative connotation with being fat. They will tell me that I’m too sensitive and that I put too many expectations on my daughter and I say to them, I AM DONE WITH YOU.

I LIVED it and I continue to live it every time I lose 5 pounds and I am praised for it. I continue to live it every time I gain weight and I notice people give me less compliments about my appearance. You are bullshitting yourself if you think there is no negative connotation with being fat. There is less today, but it still exists.

When Fiona uttered this sentence, I panicked. Where did she pick this up? I, for one, don’t use the word fat. I use the word heavy and overweight, but not fat, because I know what it carries with it. We also refer to foods as being healthy, or having “vitamins to make you run fast”. Had she picked it up from her friends? Seen it on an ad? I was a little stunned, and a little disgusted, even know the intellectual side of me knew she was four years old. She reminded me of that blonde in my class on the playground who always made fun of my awkward body during Project Adventure.

“Fiona, we do not say that. That is not nice. Get in the car.”

I buckled her up, prayed, and said to myself – Do not be hard on her. Do not project your experience on her and shame her. Just be honest, factual, and tell her your experience.

“Fiona, I have to tell you a story.”

“What?”

“A long time ago, Mama was overweight when she was a kid. A lot of people made fun of Mama and called her fat and it made Mama feel really, really bad. So I know how it feels, and it doesn’t feel good. That’s why we don’t call people fat.”

I don’t know if was blood memory, or a sudden lightbulb that went off in her head, but Fiona’s face turned ashen. Her face crumpled, and she GOT IT. Like, mourned for her mother got it. Like, cried all the way home got it. I immediately felt horrid, even know I know I maintained an even tone (isn’t this motherhood thing fucked?)

On the way home, she turned her face into the seat, ashamed. I tried to reiterate my unconditional love for her. “Baby, Mama doesn’t think any differently of you – Mama would love you even if you punched somebody! It’s just important we’re kind to people.” It didn’t seem to help. She whimpered and finally started to come around after I distracted her with a joke.

*****

Parenthood is brutal. It’s even more brutal with a trauma history you have to dissect and not project onto your kids whilst maintaining some sort of a lesson for them when they’re unkind. Childhood is brutal too – imagine not knowing you were being unkind, and then being told you were being unkind in a way that hurt your parent when they were kids? Imagine being so innocent and then not, knowing your Mama was hurt for the way she looked? And would that happen to you?

Yesterday, someone on my husband’s facebook feed disagreed with the meme that Donald Trump’s words about sexual assault leading to the actual crime did not matter, and that words are very different from actions. I sit here enraged, thinking about that, because I know the effect of words. Words that lead to sexual assault. “FAT” leading to “less than” leading to “it’s ok to touch her in a sexual way because she’s less than”.

So, I’m a little late to the game. Apparently, for a few years now, some schools have been including a BMI (Body Mass Index) score on children’s report cards. In 2011, The Huffington Post reports that BMI scores are “the latest weapon in the fight against the growing obesity epidemic in children”. I’m sure you can already guess my reaction to this, but before I get into the more objective reasons, I’ll include a little personal history.

You all know I was an overweight kid. An overweight kid who carried a lot of shame about both her body and imperfections. Those imperfections included my less-than-stellar grades in math. Report cards, a necessary evil, filled me with anxiety and dread every quarter. Why? I knew, deep down, that I wasn’t a perfect student; I occasionally turned in homework late and periodically made careless mistakes on tests. I held a deep level of shame due to these peccadilloes – I feared I was a bad person because of it. I feared my parents’ reaction to it and hated myself around report card time. “I should be doing better”, I would mutter to myself.

Can you imagine the amount of shame I would have had if BMI’s were added back in the 90’s? Can you imagine the ridicule I would have gotten from fellow students? Can you imagine the reaction from “trusted adults”?

Let doctors and nutritionist do their jobs, and let teachers do theirs. Is it important that we model a healthy lifestyle for children in our schools? Absolutely. Teaching them to obsess about a number is not modelling a healthy lifestyle. Especially when schools continue to pack their vending machines with candy bars and less-than-healthy foods. Hello, mixed messages? More importantly, who are the people who are trained to deal with an individual’s weight, activity and nutrition level? Their PCP. Their PCP can do a much more thorough job of determining whether or not a child is healthy or unhealthy. Better than an index number. And better than an untrained teacher or administrative personnel who is transmitting this information to a child. (I’m not knocking teachers, I just think it’s clear kids’ personal doctors are probably better equipped to assess that stuff.)

BMI’s can trigger, but not cause, an eating disorder. I’m a firm believer that a multitude of factors need to be in place to cause an eating disorder. But, an environmental trigger like a BMI report card can trigger a child who is already predisposed to having one. Kids at school are already influenced by bullies at school telling them they need to weigh less, wear better clothes, or don more makeup. But if adults told them this? We may forget adults in our lives wielded an unusual amount of power, power that has the ability to influence us for decades and haunt us. Some kids may not care two ways to Sunday if a trusted adult in their life tells them they’re fat. But a vulnerable child? A child who comes from a traumatic home or has low self-esteem to boot? They’ll take that as truth, and they’ll run with it. People vulnerable to eating disorders tend to be people-pleasers, and if someone tells them to lose weight, they’ll do it. I personally know someone who has been triggered by BMI report cards. This is no joke.

BMI’s are not the most accurate predictor of fat mass. In general, can it tell you if you need to lose weight? Probably, I’m not a doctor. But there are other scales – two are Body Fat Mass and Percentage of Body Fat. It’s completely possible to have an obese BMI and a normal or overweight score for BFM or PBF. I’ve also known people who weight train, lose inches from their waist, and watch their BMI scores rise. Go Kaleo talks a LOT about this (she’s a WARRIOR, check out her blog/fb page). And, here you can see how she’s clinically overweight by current indexes. Ridiculousness.

BMI scores are not going to change a perpetually unhealthy household. I’m guessing that national health advocates are hoping that BMI scores will “wake up” parents who don’t keep a good eye on their child’s nutrition. As in, maybe they’ll change their family food habits if they see their kid weighs too much. Mmmmkay. I believe this might work for a total of two weeks. Why the cynicism, you ask? Well, I’m going to take a wild guess and say that the majority of households who constantly feed their kids donuts, soda and McDonalds may not have access to food that is healthier and therefore, higher-priced. So, there’s financial blocks, and there’s mental blocks too. I’m going to go a step farther – which may get me in trouble here – and posit that these same families may not be in the best place mentally or spiritually. And the solution to this is not a number on a report card. It’s a change in family communication patterns or beliefs. You don’t work from the outside in and put a band-aid on it; you treat the actual wound. Bottom line, NUMBERS NEVER HELP PEOPLE TO LOSE WEIGHT OR CHANGE LIFESTYLE BELIEFS.

Isn’t the medical profession’s oath “Do No Harm”? I can’t take credit for this one. A couple of weeks ago, on Good Morning America, one of their medical correspondents “weighed in” on this subject. GMA had interviewed several teenage girls who had communicated that the BMI scores ultimately made them feel bad about themselves. The reporting medical correspondent insightfully noted the medical profession’s possible betrayal of its oath. If GMA’s small-scale interview translates to the rest of the teenage population, then harm is being done.

Is obesity healthy? No way. But neither are eating disorders. Our nation has missed the mark and swung the opposite way with food obsession. We uselessly obsess about gluten and sugar and numbers. And I’ve harassed you all before about the dangers of obsessing about food and numbers. Obsession about numbers = obesssion about outside appearance = not solving your food issues. But working from the inside out works every time. Building your child’s self-esteem through encouragement of esteemable tasks? Works. And modelling a balanced diet and positive self-esteem will protect your children from any imbalance. But an index number? No way.

A BIG thanks goes out to Liz for sending me this posting by Nate Milsham. Nate writes about the difficulty, pain and triumphs one experiences when trying to support someone with an eating disorder. (I’ll go on record and say it’s one of the most difficult disorders to support.) His wife has been battling ED-NOS for years, and in this post he details his sensitive observations of her and the how the outside world treats women.

Well yes, they are. And you are contributing to many a woman’s death, on a daily basis, all for your love of money.

Stop trying to kill my sisters. Or my daughter, for that matter.

What if you, instead, chose to publish an un-airbrushed, average looking lady on your cover? Might that young pre-teen you’re selling to have not chosen to go on a 500-calorie a day diet? Maybe, maybe not. Even if you’re not the direct cause, you’re part of the equation.

And when the women who don’t kill themselves via starvation give up on attaining that perfect ideal, they swing the other way. They start binging, because they just as well might give up and “get fat because there’s no hope for me anyway.” You may have heard of an epidemic called “obesity.” You play a part in that.

They buy into your bullshit because you’ve inundated them with false truths since the moment they were born. Society’s values do a number on them too – “sweet, cute, Daddy’s little girl.” Pushed down by the patriarchy as soon as they can breathe air.

Oh, and stop trying to kill our mothers.

The other day, I heard a husband joke about giving his wife 6 months post-partum to appear as if she never had a baby. Behind the joking that made me want to stick a needle in my eye – there is truth. A million of your articles have been dedicated to women pretending as if they never took part in assisting the human race in surviving. Makes sense.

Keeping women insecure earns a lot of money for you. How do you sleep at night? How do you live with yourself?

Either way, it’s got to stop. You make my new-mother friend feel like she should weigh less, you make my daughter the subject of weight stereotypes, and you make me feel like my genetic spider veins are little spindles of evil on my pasty-white, untanned-and-therefore-unappealing skin.

STOP.

(Another Piece of Cake realizes there are healthy ad campaigns out there, and applauds them! Another Piece of Cake also realizes men are hit hard by the media too, but Another Piece of Cake only writes about women because she’s, well…a woman.)

This week’s link comes to us from Pam G, a friend from college who is a caring Mom of three (one older son and twin boys – she’s my hero!) The article is written by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, who has a TV show and books and other fabulous stuff. It’s called Please Don’t Talk About Your Weight In Front of My Daughters,and in it she writes about the importance of adults NOT putting their own bodies down in front of kids.

Why?

Kids do what we do, not what we say. So even if you tell them they’re gorgeous and breathtaking, they’re still probably going to have bad body image if you talk shit about your abs 24/7.

I am LOVING this Friday’s Blissful Body Friday link. This was sent to me by Jen R, a very hip, astute young lady I went to college with. In this article, Serge Bielanko writes about the ever-changing female perfect-body-ideal. I blogged about this in a past entry, but Serge Bielanko attached all these awesome pictures to illustrate the crazy, ephemeral change of what is supposed to be attractive.

Do you know why I included this as a Blissful Body Friday entry? Because this article illustrates how beauty is so damn arbitrary. Hate your broad back? Wait until 2085, then it’ll be attractive to society. Want to get surgery for your cellulite? In 3546 it will be the tattoos of today. For heaven’s sake, unibrows could be in style one day.

So this lady’s argument is that there’s this common theme today of saying “real women” are only size 14, with curves, and that thin or healthy women get shit on in regards to being “real”. If you scroll down, she tells you that she was one of the overweight women in the second set of pics, and then she became a bodybuilder. Can I tell you something? I agree with ONE of her points. And that is:

There has been a backlash against slender people since the body-acceptance movement. It’s true. I bet most naturally-tiny people have felt discriminated against at times, with the boatloads of body acceptance size 14 memes floating around the internet. The truth is, all women who don’t have botox and don’t photoshop their pics have “real” bodies.

But I don’t agree with the rest of the article. And here’s why.

1. One thing that bothers me is the name-calling. Lady, how ’bout you don’t shame people by telling them they have “shitty” eating habits.

2. She’s using her story in the wrong way. This gal apparently lost like 50 lbs or so. OK, good for you, I was overweight as a kid too and lost it (albeit through unhealthy ways.) Just because I am society’s standard of “normal” doesn’t mean you see me taking the “real women” movement personally. I’m confident enough to know I have a real body, a body that is just as real as those size 14-ers. It’s like a white person crying because black people have their own equality organizations.

3. I’m sorry, but if you’re a bodybuilder, I’m guessing you use extreme measures to maintain your appearance.

4. WHAT ABOUT DEPRESSION? This lady makes losing weight/getting healthy seem supremely easy. And you know what? It is, for some. But others have to battle co-existing illness like depression and anxiety which compound the ability to lose it. You don’t have a choice when you have depression; it’s a disease and you have symptoms that prevent you from making choices.

5. And oh yeah, there’s class status. Not everyone is white and middle class and is able to shop at Whole Foods!

6. And lastly, God. Lady, I am guessing when people say “God gave me this body”, they mean their genetics/biology. And guess what? That does have an impact. I’m never going to be Anna Kendrick-sized, but I’m also not ever going to be Geena Davis sized. Science does, in fact, happen!

Bottom line: I just hate that women like this get 47,000 likes on an article of this quality, which is basically a shot to get money and publicity through emotional manipulation. And my little blog just plods along…albeit happily…

I feel like that revered pair of jeans is a part of most women’s closets. They even made a Sex and the City episode about it (Remember, when Miranda fit into her No Excuses jeans from high school and instantly was able to flirt with a hot guy? Funny episode, but c’mon.).

Why, you ask?

If you hold onto a pair of jeans that is smaller than what you are now, you will always be comparing yourself to that number. You’ll always be wishing you were that size again. You’ll always be wanting to be smaller. And, as our great friend the Buddha taught us, distress and unhappiness take place when we reside in the “wanting” of anything. When we accept where we are now, we are happier (and I’m betting, if you actually want to lose some weight in a healthy way, it will come off easier when you stop thinking about numbers in general. Throw away the jeans, put away the scale, stop counting calories or fat grams or sugar grams or WHATEVER.)

A personal anecdote –

I had this size (bleep!) skirt that I bought sophomore year in high school. It was blue satin, was bought in Harvard Square, and everyone commented on how thin I looked in it. Years later, when I was a few sizes up, I still had it. It sat in the back of the closet and teased me. It taunted me. “Why aren’t you this weight?” it said.

So, I got sick of its bullshit and threw it out.

Today, I have a closet that’s full of stretchy, one-size-fits-most type clothing. It works for me.

Today, I’m throwing the question out to you guys – what tips have worked in your quest for good body image?

*Remember, what works for me may not work for you. Proceed at your own risk.

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My mother, who is compassionate to a fault and takes care of all living things, even the insects, complains when I don’t tolerate family gossiping about me because she is more committed to order than justice. She wishes I would try harder with people who have told me I never should have been a mother. […]